"How gay Mrs. Hammond has grown lately!" said Mrs. Greyling, the
fashionable critic of the ---- House drawing-room. "Do you see that she
is actually waltzing to-night? She moves well, too! That pearl-colored
moire antique is handsome, and must have cost every cent of nine
dollars a yard. She is partial to heavy silks, it seems. It gives an
air of sameness to her dress; otherwise she shows very tolerable taste."
"I have heard it said that she was a regular dowdy before she was
married," observed Mrs. Parton, who was also on the "committee of
censure"--a self-appointed organization, which found ample employment
in this crowded nest of pleasure-seekers. "Her husband is perpetually
making her presents, and she dresses to please him."
"Humph! I distrust these pattern couples! 'My husband doesn't approve
of my doing this--won't hear of my acting so!' are phrases easily
learned, and sound so fine that one soon falls into the habit of using
them. What a flirt Mrs. Benson is! That is the fifth young man she has
danced with this evening. I pity her husband and baby!"
"He does not look inconsolable! I tell you what my notion is: he may
love his wife--of course he does--but he admires her sister more. See
how he watches her! Mrs. Tomes told me that she was standing near him
the first time Mrs. Hammond waltzed, and that he seemed real worried.
When the set was through, she came to look for a seat, and he got one
for her. As she took it, he said something to her which Mrs. Tomes
could not hear, but she laughed out in his face as saucy as could be,
and said: 'Oh, I am learning when I am in Rome to do as Romans do!
Doesn't my elder sister set the example?'"
"He could say nothing then," said Mrs. Greyling. "Those girls played
their cards well. The Hunts have very little, if anything, besides the
father's salary, and the family was very obscure."
Mrs. Greyling's paternal progenitor was an opulent soap-boiler, who
was not ashamed, during her childhood, to drive an unsavory cart from
one kitchen door to another. But he counted his thousands now by the
hundred, and his children ranked, as a consequence, among the "upper
ten."
She continued her charitable remarks: "Somehow the old lady contrived
to keep up the appearance of wealth, and married both daughters off
before their second season. Mr. Benson is reputed to be rich; but for
that matter these Southern planters are all said to be rolling in
money. Mr. Hammond is certainly making money. Mr. Greyling says he is a
splendid business man."
"He sailed for Europe a week ago, you know."
"Yes; and since then madame has been the belle of the ball. The old
story--'When the cat is away, the mice will play.'"
"Sarah," said Philip, an hour later, "will you walk on the balcony with
me? You are heated, and the air is balmy as Georgian breezes. It will
do you good."
"Are you going to scold me?" she asked, archly, before she would take
his arm.
"No. I have no right to do it if I had the disposition."
There was no moon; but the sky was strewed thickly with stars, and the
white foam of the surf caught and held tremulously the sparkles from
the bright watchers above. Philip did not appear disposed to converse,
and Sarah waited for him to begin. Meanwhile, they strolled on and
on, until the murmur of the ocean was louder than the music of the
saloon band. The sea moaned to the stars, as it had done to the sunless
July heavens on that day so memorable in the history of one of the
pair--the day of shipwreck stories and a real shipwreck--none the less
disastrous, that the treasures and their loss were hidden from all but
the bereaved one.
To many it is appointed to lead two lives; to think and feel as well
as to act a double part; to separate, as inexorably as human will
can decree, past hopes and joys--past sorrows, and, if practicable,
past memories from the thoughts and emotions of the to-day in which
they exist. Thousands keep up the barrier until death ends the need
of watchfulness and labor; the coffin-lid covers the faithful mask
that has smiled so patiently and so long above an aching heart. Yet
dammed up passion is a dangerous thing. If hearts were so constituted
that they could be drained like pestilential marshes, the flood
conducted off in harmless and straight channels, then, indeed, might
hypocrisy rejoice, and sleek decorum sit down at ease. As it is,
genteel propriety and refined reticence are perpetually endangered by
the unforeseen swell of some intermittent spring, or the thawing of
some ice-bound stream, that is liable to overleap or tear away the
dike--ingulfing in an instant the elaborate structures years of toil
have cheaply purchased.
Such was the moment when, withdrawing her hand from Philip's arm, Sarah
struck suddenly--fiercely--upon her breast, and cried: "Oh! why cannot
I die and end this misery!"
"Sarah!"
"I say I can bear it no longer! Others do not suffer thus! If they do,
they die, or lose their reason. I will not endure it, I tell you!"
"Sister!"
"Do not call me by that name, Philip Benson! You know better!"
She leaned forward on the balcony railing, her eyes fixed on the sea.
Her deep, hurried breathing was like the pant of some worried animal,
gathering strength, and, with it, courage for renewed conflict. To
her last words the mysterious plaint of the sea lent meaning. Philip,
too, remembered that barren shore, the tumbling breakers, the solitary
sea-bird's labored flight landward. Was this his work? It was but a
flicker of truth--dashed out the next second by a blow of indignant
will.
"You may forbid me to address you by this title, Sarah; but you cannot
hinder me from sympathizing with you in your sorrow, and trying to
befriend you. If my companionship is unwelcome, allow me to conduct you
to your room. I cannot leave you alone here, where there is continual
passing."
"You are right. Regard for appearances is the one thing needful," she
said, mockingly. "I must be a dull scholar if I have not learned that
I am sane again now--fit to associate with other sane people. If you
please, we will go to the ball-room instead of upstairs. I am not a
candidate for solitary confinement yet!"
"Mrs. Hammond, I heard a gentleman inquiring anxiously for you just
now!" called out a lady, in passing. "He said that you promised to
dance with him."
"I did. Thank you for reminding me. A little faster, my good brother!"
She hurried him into the saloon, where they were met immediately by
her would-be partner. Philip, bewildered and uneasy, watched her
through the evolutions of the dance. She talked rapidly and animatedly,
keeping her cavalier in a broad smile, and confirming her lately won
reputation of a wit. Her eyes shone; her color was high; she was
"really handsome"--as the "censure committee" had occasion to remember
at a later day, when it was spoken of in a very different tone from
that employed by a member of the distinguished sisterhood in addressing
Mrs. Hunt on this night.
"You are a fortunate mother, my dear madam, to have two such brilliant
daughters. They eclipse the girls entirely."
"I have nothing to complain of in my children, ma'am. I done--I did my
best by them, and they have repaid me a thousandfold."
"Now, I am ready!" said Sarah, to her brother-in-law. "I release you,
Mr. Burley!" waving her hand to her late attendant as a princess might
to a courtier.
Vexed and disturbed by her unsettled manner and queer freaks, Philip
gave her his arm, and conducted her through the throng.
"Lewis has had fair winds, and must now be nearing the end of his
voyage," he remarked, as they sauntered along the piazza.
"Ah! he is on the sea to-night! How strange! I had not thought of that!"
"I see nothing wonderful in the idea, as he has not had time to cross
the Atlantic since he left these shores," returned Philip, dryly. "The
oddest thing I can think of at present is yourself, Sarah!"
"I am aware of that, Philip. Do not speak harshly to me! You may be
sorry for it some day."
They were at her door. Her softened manner moved him, and as she
offered her hand, he took it with fraternal warmth.
"Forgive me, if I was rough! I have not understood you this evening."
"It is not likely that you ever will. Time was--but it is folly to
allude to that now! Think of me as kindly as you can--will you? You
have wounded me sometimes, but never knowingly. I cannot say that of
many others with whom I have had dealings. Good-night."
The little parlor was still. Mrs. Hammond never kept her maid up to
assist in her disrobing, if she intended remaining out until a late
hour. Nurse and child were quiet in the adjacent nursery. Closing
the door of communication, Sarah stripped her hair and arms of their
ornaments; took off her diamond pin, then her rings, and laid them
away in her jewelry case; divested herself of her rich dress, and drew
from her wardrobe a plain, dark wrapper, which she put on. Next she
sat down at her writing-desk, selected a sheet of paper, and wrote a
single line--when a thought struck her, and she stopped. A momentary
irresolution ended in her tearing off a strip containing what she had
penned, and holding it in the flame of the lamp until it was consumed.
"Best not! best not!" she muttered. "Doubt may bring comfort to the one
or two who will need it. Let them doubt! Save appearances if you can,
my poor mother would say." A smile of unutterable scorn glimmered over
her face. She pushed away the desk and walked to the window.
From the distant ball-room the throbbing waves of music still rolled
past on the summer air, and blent with them was the solemn undertone
of the surf. Did men call its mighty voice a monotone? To her it was
eloquent of many and awful things--not frightful. What was there of
terror in thoughts of rest, endless sleep, rocked for ages by the
rising and falling tide, hushed into dreamless repose by the music of
the billows? No more of a vain and wearisome life; no more baffled
aspirations and crushed affections; no more disheartening attempts
to find and reach the right--to follow in the steep, rugged path of
duty, and shun the easy, alluring way to which heart and memory were
ever pointing; no more of stern rebuke and sneering taunt; no more
galled pride and outraged womanhood; no more lying gayety, smiles, and
repartee, when the spirit was writhing in impotent agony, longing to
shriek out its intensity of woe! Only sleep, rest, peace!
"Sleep! rest peace!" She gasped the words feverishly, as they seemed
to come to her on the breeze. Might she not seek these now! now!
Not yet! The grounds, the beach were still populous with groups of
strollers. She would be seen--perhaps recognized--probably frustrated
in her purpose. Leaning her head against the casement, she sat there an
hour--not debating, still less wavering in her resolve, only waiting
until flight would be safe--and thinking! thinking! thinking! until her
brain whirled.
A thwarted, warped, disjointed existence had hers been from its
beginning. Denied food suitable for the mental and spiritual need;
denied sympathy, air, and expression of suffering; under the slow
torture of this starvation, every avenue to goodness and liberty
hedged up, and, for the future, temptation, repudiation, loneliness,
perhaps a sullied name--who could dispute her right to try release by
one brief pang she alone could feel? Who would miss her? Not the world
that flattered her wealth and wit, her laces, silks, and diamonds; not
the mother and sister who worshipped the gilded Juggernaut "Society;"
not he who was that night sleeping soundly on the same sea that would
embosom her in her sweeter, deeper slumber. Shocked he might be at an
event so unexpected and uncommon. His next sensation would be a relief
at his deliverance from a burden, at his freedom to come and go as he
liked--no longer banished by her obstinacy and his own. He had loved
her as most other men do their wives--a bond too weak to bear a heavy
blow at their self-love. She had sinned beyond forgiveness in his eyes.
Of Philip she thought with a mingling of tenderness and resentment.
His unthinking gallantry had been the root of her sorest trouble; but
it was unthinking, not wilful wrong. Nor was she the only sufferer.
His heart was well-nigh as hungry as hers. Within the past week she
had seen this more clearly than ever before, and he had felt it!
Lucy's narrow mind, her insipidity, her inordinate vanity, her selfish
idolatry of pleasures that wearied him; her disrelish for intellectual
and domestic enjoyments, displayed in its most objectionable form, in
her indifference to his company, and her neglect of her child--these
were working out their legitimate result in his alienation from her,
and attraction towards the once slighted sister, whose large heart
and mental gifts he now valued at their true worth. To repel him, as
much as to drown her cares, Sarah had plunged into the vortex she had
heretofore avoided. She had heard that there was temporary solace
in this species of dissipation. The cup was, for her, sparkless and
bitter, from surface to dregs.
She was saving him with herself by this final step! He would realize
this truth, in the throe that would shake his soul when he found she
was gone; perhaps, even in that anguished hour, would bless her for
having showed to him, while she drove him back from, the abyss they
were together approaching. It was no idle vaunt she had made to Lewis,
that the principles inherited from her father would save her from overt
sin. Thus, thus would she flee the temptation, when the heart had left
the will to battle unaided.
Her father! the gray old man who was toiling through this summer's
heat, in his deserted home, as he had through so many summers gone! he
who had never given her an impatient or angry word--whose pride and
joy she still was! The stroke would be severe upon him. Yet he would
not refuse comfort. There were still left to him his boys--fine, manly
fellows; Jeannie and his baby grandchild--his lost daughter's gift.
Tears rushed into the hot, wild eyes with this last image, but she
would not let them flow.
"Is it not better that I should leave her now, when the parting will
give her no pain, when one little week will blot out my memory entirely
from her mind, than to wait until she can recollect and miss me?"
The music had ceased. The revellers had dropped away faster than they
had collected, when once the movement was made to retire. The murmur of
the deep was the only sound abroad; the stars were the only sentinels.
Sarah arose, threw a shawl over her head, and cautiously unlocked the
door. A strong rush of air blew it from her hold, and as she caught
it, to draw it after her, she trod upon some object lying on the floor.
Mechanically she stooped to pick it up. It was an infant's shoe, a
dainty little gaiter, that peeped, during the day, from beneath Baby
Belle's white skirt. To Sarah's touch it seemed that the lining still
retained the warmth of the child's foot.
Never, oh, never, was the patter of those baby feet to make glad music
for the mother's ear! Others must guide and sustain her trial steps;
others smooth her daily path; others direct the inexperience of the
girl in the perilous passes where that mother had fallen and perished!
"Oh, may I not bless her before I leave her forever?" she cried to
stern Resolution. And Conscience rejoined, with meaning severity: "Is
it you who would breathe a blessing above her purity?"
"Suffer me, then, to take the farewell look I dared not grant myself
before!"
And while Resolution faltered at the impassioned appeal, she opened the
nursery door and stole to the side of the crib. The night-lamp shed a
feeble halo over the table whereon it stood. The rest of the room was
in darkness. Mary's light bedstead was close to the crib. Was hers that
hard, short breathing, that sent a start and chill through the hearer?
A touch to the lamp threw a blaze of light over nurse and child. A
sharp cry rang through the chamber.
"Mary, Mary! get up!"
The girl sprang to the floor before she comprehended the meaning of the
alarm. Mrs. Hammond had sunk into a chair beside the crib, from which
she had snatched her infant. Baby Belle's head was strained back; her
hands clenched; her limbs stiffened in a death-like spasm. The eyes
were rolled out of sight under the lids; and the four little teeth--her
"most precious pearls," the fond mother had called them--were
hard-locked within the purple lips.
Terrified as she was, Mary had the presence of mind to run for
assistance. Mrs. Hunt and a physician were soon on the spot, and every
appliance of the healing art that promised relief to the sufferer was
used, but with partial effect. Sarah saw nothing but the child; heard
nothing but the doctor's calm orders.
"You do not try to help her!" she said, impatiently, as a convulsion,
more fearful than any that had preceded it, seized the delicate frame.
"I could not do more, were it my own child, madam!"
He was an elderly man, whose charity for fashionable mothers was very
scant, and, having seen Mrs. Hammond in the ball-room the evening
before, he was not prepared for the solicitude she manifested.
"You had better let the nurse take her!" he said, more gently, as
Sarah, with difficulty, held down the struggling hands that might do
hurt to the head and face.
"No! I will have no one touch her but myself!"
The morning broke, the day heightened into noon, and the paroxysms only
abated in violence as the babe's strength declined. Steadfast to her
word, the mother had not once resigned her. She had herself immersed
her in the warm baths, applied the poultices, and administered the
medicines prescribed. Mrs. Hunt was compassionate and active; Mary
sorrowful, and prompt with whatever service she could perform; Lucy
frightened and idle.
Philip, who had often been in the outer room to make inquiries and
offer aid, if any were required of him, was told, just before sunset,
that he could go into the chamber. Mrs. Hunt invited him, and the
information she added gave to his countenance a look of heartfelt
sadness as he followed her. Sarah sat in the middle of the room, so
altered that he could scarcely credit the fact of her identity with the
being he had parted from the previous night. Her eyes were sunken, her
features sharpened, and her complexion had the dead, grayish hue of an
old woman's. In her arms lay the babe, and, as she crouched over it,
her mien of defiant protection suggested to him the idea of a savage
animal guarding her young. He could not say whether or not she was
aware of his presence, until he knelt by the dying child and called it
by name.
"Baby Belle, do you know Uncle Philip?"
The dark eyes, soft still through the gathering film, moved slightly,
and Sarah said--
"Speak to her again!"
"Will Baby Belle come to uncle?"
This time there was no sign of consciousness. The wee hands clasped in
the mother's grew colder and colder, and the breath fluttered slowly
through the parted lips. The end was near, and Philip's pitying accent
expressed his sense of this.
"Give her to me, dear Sarah! It is not right for you to keep her
longer."
"She is mine!"
The glare that came to her eye with the three words revealed a
desperation that would have done battle with the King of Terrors, had
he appeared in visible shape to claim his victim.
More faintly, slowly, trembled the life over the sweet mouth, and
the hands, like waxen shapes, lay pulseless in the mother's clasp;
while through the silent room flowed the dirge of the sea. Shaken by
the freshening breeze of evening, the shutters of the western window
swung ajar, letting in a golden ray upon mother and child, and along
that path of light the untarnished soul of Baby Belle was borne by its
waiting angel--home!